And then, he had difficulty retracing his steps, the street names not what they were. The walk back seemed to age him. After a half dozen blocks, he was too tired to go any further and he sat down on a bench in front of an abandoned church, took out a handkerchief and wiped the rain from his face. In a moment or so he would get up and locate a public telephone (that consideration sustaining him), and report to Isabelle his painful misadventure. Sweetheart, she would say, I’m so sorry.
Her pity, in his imagination of it, was more than he could bear. Why, if she were as devoted to him as she pretended, had she gone off with Max?
Oh Terman, she would say — or was it Luke? — you are a misery, luv, aren’t you?
He continued to sit, clasping himself against the damp air. People passed occasionally, glancing at him with indifference. He imagined himself getting up, locating a Newsagent on the next street or the next, buying a Guardian to get some change — mostly he avoided the English papers — locating a phone box, closing himself in, dialing his number. All he really had to do was get back to his car on Barlby Street and drive himself home.
When he looked up he saw the Pakistani and another swarthy man coming down the street toward him. Their impending presence moved him to cross the street, his gesture making it clear, he hoped, that he didn’t want to be interfered with again. The Pakistani called something to him and he shouted back, “Nothing to worry about, thank you.”
What the hell did they want with him? He turned right at the next corner, though he couldn’t remember if he had come that way or not. It was the shock of it that caused him to lose his poise. On the next corner, standing with his back to him, was the Arab that had thrown the stone at him. (Had he thrown the stone because he recognized Terman as a Jew?) Stupidly — he knew it was a mistake to call attention to himself even as he gave vent to the impulse — he broke into a run. Not looking back, he took a left turn at the next corner, a narrow winding street called Vashti Lane, which connected with a series of other winding streets. His sense of direction betrayed him. He hurried from one tortuous street to the next only to discover himself returned to the very street from which he had taken precipitous leave.
He stood awhile against the wall at the intersection of Calgary Road and Vashti Lane before daring to look around the corner. His adversaries were standing across the street in front of a red and white stucco house, their backs to him, heads close together like conspirators. It was at moments like this that he was most aware of being in a foreign country, of having nowhere in particular to turn in a crisis. Panic governed him. He returned up the series of winding streets, running at first, then walking quickly, atempting a new set of choices. Whatever he did, his choices blind, he found himself back on Calgary Road, his original point of departure. A third time (or was it the fourth?) he reversed himself, varying his route, taking two successive lefts then a right then another half right and another, until he found himself in a cul de sac, a medium-high fence backing on a small unkempt field. In all of the maze of streets he had come, there had not been one open shop or a single working public telephone.
There was no entrance to the field at his end. Nothing to do, he thought, but climb the fence, no matter the difficulties, and trust there was an open gate on the other side. The fence seemed slightly lower on the left, round-shouldered from erosion, though the far right side offered the advantage of a cement pedestal of about two feet high that might bear his weight. If he raised himself on his toes while standing on the pedestal, he could grip the fence sufficiently to pull himself over.
An old woman, banging on the sill with a shoe, called to him from the window to go away.
He waved to her, asked if there was an exit on the other side of the field.
“If you don’t scoot this instant, young man, I’ll have the bobbies on you,” she said. She had a face that looked as if it could turn you into stone.
Terman walked away as though he had accepted her warning, not looking back until he judged himself beyond her range. The head was hanging out like a flag, peering blindly in his direction. He waited until it had withdrawn, and then a minute or so beyond that. If he could clear the fence at one jump, the unstatued pedestal his springboard, he might get by without the old lady’s notice. He got a running start, had one foot over, was awkwardly split at the top, when the head thrust itself out the window and squalled at him to get away.
Her shouting harried him like a vicious dog at his heels. The second leg cleared awkwardly, ankle scraping the top. Unable to brace himself for the fall, he took all his weight on his left leg and pitched forward, his other leg folded under him like an afterthought. The pain came in flashes and seemed bearable except in moments of expectation. He was in a vacated lot, once perhaps a cricket pitch or a small park. There was the skeleton of a structure in one corner, the beginnings of an apartment complex that had either been temporarily or permanently abandoned.
He couldn’t get up, reconciled himself to the arrival of the police, the inevitable nastiness and misunderstanding.
It was possible that his leg was broken, one or the other (one banged up, the other severely twisted), though he was inclined to think not. When the pain receded — the left ankle its main source — he rolled onto his side. He rested a few minutes from his exertion. Using his right arm for leverage, he gradually pulled himself upright, the preponderance of his weight on his right leg. How odd to be standing. How unnatural the position seemed. He walked a few cautious steps, putting one foot in front of the other, right first then left, then right, the process not quite as he remembered it. His body refused the upright position, longed to fall. He stopped his stuttering walk, stood with his legs apart, half-squatting, to purchase his balance. The ragged park, deserted except for an urchin kicking a soccer ball at the far end, extended itself before him. There was no sign of the police, but he could believe that the old lady would follow through on her threat. What else was there in her life? He forced himself to walk, pulling one foot, dragging the other, the space magnified by his urgency. He had to instruct his feet to get himself moving, each step ordered to specification. The far end of the park — he could make out an open gate where the boy was kicking the ball — approached him by degrees. Nausea came and went, settled in for a prolonged visit. His right foot must place itself ahead of his left and then his left must outdo, if only by several inches, if only by its own size, the presumptions of his right. The boy looked up at him, stared for a moment, then went about his business, which included a controversy with an imaginary adversary.
The closer he got to the exit — he was more than halfway there, he thought — the greater his sense of urgency. He might actually escape his pursuers, avoid confrontation with the police, find a taxi and return to the safety (the relative safety) of his own house. He didn’t want to believe it, resisted hope, committed to no larger possibility than fulfilling the demands of the next step.
Only for moments did he think of the target he offered, limping slowly across the open field. It would not require a particularly good marksman to bring him down.
He was struck by the recollection of an airless Polish film he had seen in Cleveland Ohio the night of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. In the movie a group of men attempt to escape the Nazis by moving through the city’s sewer system, a network of underground tunnels. The maze of entrapment had never seemed more claustrophobic. One man gets through at the end. When he rises from the sewer, after having miraculously endured in that underground hell, Terman had anticipated that enemy soldiers would be waiting for him. That they weren’t did not undo for him the expectation that they were there, and had chosen not to reveal themselves. The survivor redescends at the end to search for his comrades or perhaps merely because he is no longer able to bear the idea of freedom.